1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to software analysis tools for web based software systems, and more particularly to analysis tools for service based systems operating on a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Service oriented software systems consist of various components which express capabilities and dependencies. These systems may be composed dynamically based on certain constraints established by individual components, such as versions and properties, expressed in other components. Characteristics of certain components of the system, such as inconsistencies, bugs, performance bottlenecks, may be emergent properties in the system as a whole, which can be difficult to isolate without substantial effort. As software systems become increasingly complex, the difficulty of diagnosing these problems becomes much higher.
A service registry is one of the fundamental pieces of service oriented architecture (SOA). It refers to a place in which service providers can impart information about their offered services and potential clients can search for services. This information includes the offered functionality of the services available to potential consumers (clients). A service registry allows information about services to be organized and provide facilities to publish and discover services. Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) and the Web Services Description Language (WSDL)—together with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)—are standards for describing services and their providers, as well as how services can be consumed in the implementation of web services in computer networks.
It would be beneficial to be able to analyze the service registry to determine the relationship between the different components and the services expressed in those components of a service based solution. Such an analysis helps to determine interdependencies between the components and their services as well as the composition of those services.